When Muses Die

An alien composer becomes dangerously obsessed with his gift. Sequel to SCARLET BEAST. Continues in REDEMPTION and FORWARD TO THE PAST.

Submitted: May 15, 2016

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Submitted: May 15, 2016

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2897 AD, Planet Lalande 21185 a (Voznesenye)

Ivan knows he has to kill her again.

An hour ago, she crawled out of her shallow grave to haunt and torment him, pestering him with incessant demands, sucking out his life force, demolishing his vision, crushing his dreams.

This has to end, once and for all.

Ivan casts a quick glance at the large brazen candelabrum towering over severed, wilted rose heads scattered over the desk. The first pages of his Fifth Symphony in B flat major, creased and torn
beyond recognition, lie hopelessly in the corner, covered by thick cobwebs. He has salvaged his favorite part, where a powerful crescendo takes the exposition towards a sudden key change,
twin oboes and a bassoon transfiguring the ecstatic fortissimo con fuoco into the sublimely serene, meditative dolce espressivo of the second theme. The rest was destroyed by her.

She is a woman. A human woman. His gravest mistake was letting her into his life in the first place.

***

As a young man, Ivan tasted the bittersweet poison of romantic love. Klava and Rozo. Even now, the rhythmically rolling sounds of those names echoing in his mind, he feels the familiar twinge in
his upper heart. He used to be a clumsy, awkward youth, both his faces cleanly shaved, diligently trying to gain recognition in the cold, unforgiving world of music. The two renowned masters
nurtured him, fostered his art, doting on him as if he was their only begotten child. They became a classical triad – the virile, physically imposing Ivan; the gentle, fragile Klava; the
inscrutably neutral Rozo. A perfect union of man, woman and boman.

Then Rozo lost its sanity and spent the last few years of its life in an asylum. Klava and Ivan drifted apart, both unable to cope with the tragedy, alienated by the world and estranged from each
other. Ivan grew two bushy beards to symbolize his resignation. From that point on, only music existed for him, into which he poured his anguish and his despair.

Until he met Lyuba.

She was one of the very few humans still dwelling on the planet Voznesenye. Living in a tiny secluded settlement, those humans were a weird bunch – grotesquely tall, slender beings
morbidly reminiscent of simplistic dolls disfigured by enraged hyperactive children, lacking essential features and organs. There is something intrinsically repulsive in a creature whose liver and
kidneys are hidden from plain sight. The scariest thing about them is the fact they only have two genders. The thought of coitus involving only a male and a female has always disgusted
Ivan. How could anyone talk seriously of love if the highly coveted, mystical fusion of flesh involved nothing but a crude combination of two primitively shaped gadgets?

Lyuba and Ivan developed a strange relationship, born out of her fascination with his music, which reminded her of the works of some prehistoric composer back on Earth, the deserted planet of her
race. She would closely study the manuscripts, give him astute advices, inhale vitality into lifeless sketches, boldly harmonize timid melodies, condense ephemeral passages into laconic, powerful
phrases dressed in robust textures. She was his inspiration, his muse.

Then he tried to kill her.

It wasn’t his fault! She was gradually becoming unbearable. A great composer is a genius who does not belong to himself, fully dedicated to his art. Since love brings nothing but pain and
desolation, a true artist is not allowed to let this treacherous emotion into his heart. Ivan recognized the dangerous symptoms when he realized how peaceful Lyuba made him feel, how comfortable
the world was becoming when she was around. Creative souls abhor tranquility, and comfort is the mortal enemy of a genius. She had no place in his life anymore.

After his futile attempts to repel her with harsh words and expressed disdain, she dared tell him his fanatical dedication to music was turning him into a monster. A monster? Surely his music was
divinely inspired, which made him more of an angel – a higher, more valuable being. She then quoted some ancient human book that compared people who felt no love to resounding gongs and clanging
cymbals. She sounded much like her famous ancestor Alexei Men, the human space traveler who had brought science, ethics, and art to the local Vozs over seven hundred years ago. Ivan was grateful to
Men for that last one, but that didn’t mean he could tolerate such sacrilegious words from his deranged descendant.

He told her he would kill anyone who stood in his path to musical perfection. In response, she grabbed the manuscript of the Fifth Symphony and began to crumple the precious paper. He lunged at
her, trying to pry the pages from her horrible hands, yelling and cursing and calling her names she had undoubtedly deserved. It was after that disgraceful scene that he firmly decided to get rid
of her for good.

One day, when she barged into his room, violating his private space, he patted her on her posterior, which would certainly prove lethal to any Voz. To his astonishment, he discovered that human
buttocks were infinitely less fragile than those of his own race. Repeatedly slapping her derrière elicited nothing but foolish laughter and giggles. She didn’t even understand that he was trying
to kill her.

Ivan read a few books that described human anatomy in gruesome, graphic detail. He almost puked when he understood that humans actually swallowed, digested, and then disgorged decomposed
organic matter. So the traditional dish from Lyuba’s ancestral homeland, a fiery substance called borsch, was, in fact, made out of dead animals and plants! Overcoming his
repulsion, Ivan found out that the middle region of the human body was relatively vulnerable, inexplicably unprotected by bones even though it contained much of the aforementioned complicated
digestive system.

The next time she started one of her incessant rants about his declining morality he punched her hard in the abdomen. She fell onto the sacred floor of his composition chamber, her misshapen body
twitching in agony. Feeling encouraged, Ivan kicked her with all his feet several times, cracking a few ribs in the process. Her howling sounded almost melodic, and Ivan made a mental note of using
that inspiration for the concluding section of the scherzo, perhaps with the piccolo flutes carrying the shrill descending scale on a diminished chord of the seventh degree towards the inevitable
resolution in the minor tonic.

Vozs can’t lose their consciousness unless they are asleep or dead. Ivan thought that Lyuba had passed away, so he dug a shallow grave and tossed her body into it.

A few hours later, she crawled out.

***

Ivan holds the brazen candelabrum firmly in his hands, the magical hands that used to make audiences weep with joy at his piano recitals. Now those hands have become the tools for writing down his
own music, the loftiest of all arts. Creation is far superior to interpretation. Creators are flawless, blameless, purified by their supreme gift. To them, everything is permitted.

Her dirty, bruised hand is shaking as she tries to reach the surface of the desk. She can’t even stand up, but she has dragged her pitiful carcass all the way to the composition chamber in order to
destroy his masterpiece! A murderess, that’s what she is!

Ivan raises the candelabrum above her head, prepared to strike.

She lifts her head and looks at him. She is trying to form words with her lips, but they are too swollen to obey. With great effort, she clutches a pen and scribbles something on an exposed part of
the manuscript.

Righteous fury consumes Ivan. He bashes her head repeatedly with the heavy candelabrum. Bone fragments are driven deep into the cracked skull, and impure brain matter soils the virginal beauty of a
newly written introduction to the tender second movement, Larghetto cantabile.

Ivan inhales the stale air of the chamber and accurately puts the candelabrum back on the desk. He takes the page with her words written on it and reads them absent-mindedly.

There are only three words.

I forgive you.

For some reason, Ivan recalls one of Alexei Men’s maxims, apparently taken from the same ancient book Lyuba liked to quote. It’s a vulgar aphorism worded in the pithy style of primitive literature.
Thou shalt not kill. Probably a rule for an uneducated tribe that did not know the heavenly joy of art.

Ivan carries out the corpse, then returns to clean up the room. He sits down at the desk and is soon greeted by the blissful voices of the muses in his exalted mind.

The Fifth Symphony in B flat major has to be completed. It is the work of a genius composer, the great Ivan Ivanovich Brhwxzgn.

Thank you for your feedback, Chris! I'm at odds with this story - did the combination of macabre content and humor work? Have I gone over the top with this one?.. I don't want to appear tasteless, but I felt the passages dealing with Ivan's unfamiliarity with humans were needed to emphasize his semi-symbolic "alienness", his lack of humanity on more than one level...

Great story, Oleg. And music is a very emotive tool that can make your life magical or alternative make you feel a fool.

AuthorReply

Comment | 61 words

Mon, May 16th, 2016 10:03am

...or turn you into a monster. Thank you for your feedback! This story was one of the hardest ones for me to write, for two reason: I had to condemn the excesses of my own profession (in a grotesque way, of course, but that's what I always do), and write a story without a single line of dialogue (for the contest)...

Woah... creepy. Very thought-provoking in a number of ways - the dangers of obsession, self-importance, creativity, views of humanity and our cultures through foreign eyes... Brilliant! Thanks for the invite :)

AuthorReply

Comment | 73 words

Mon, May 16th, 2016 10:00am

Thank you for your kind comment, Amy! Being a professional musician myself, I can see the danger of obsession and idolization of art in the eyes of some people. A musician - even a genius composer - does what he can with the gift he has received from God, just like a carpenter or a driver or any other person who works honestly. The gravest danger for music is putting musicians on pedestals.

Intriguing. Great descriptive work - paints the scenes well.
Perhaps this is why I shall never finish my composition of 'Requiem for the Piano Player' ... I'm not 'deadly' enough. Or I don't have the right muses ...

God forbid you have the same "muses" as this evil alien version of Brahms - and I hope the original one, as well as RObert Schumann and his wife KLAra forgive me. I'm not even sure his Fifth Symphony is any good. Sounds trite and derivative to me, especially the Larghetto :-)

The Vozs have Russian first names thanks to Alexei Men's cultural influence, but retain their native surnames that would be barely (if at all) pronounceable by us. "Brhwxzgn" looks a bit like "Brahms", but it is also - curiously - the surname of Doc BROWN-based character from my story "Forward to the Past".

Made me laugh, made me think and made me wonder how these creatures actually look. I really can't imagine how Ivan actually looks like, which makes it even more intresting to my oppinion. I liked the "rythm" of your writing a lot, as I think that it kept a good balance between describing how the character feels and the actual actions that took place, meaning that it was far from boring. Thanks for sharing this beautiful story.

AuthorReply

Comment | 116 words

Mon, May 16th, 2016 7:39pm

Thank you very much for your kind feedback! I deliberately refrain from fully describing the Vozs, but the two stories that deal with them (this one and "Forward to the Past") reveal some unsavory (for us!) details such as liver and kidneys located on their faces etc. Also, they seem to have more of everything, i.e. three genders, five legs, etc. And they eat kerosene and sulphur.

My only goal in making them grotesque and barely describable (to us!) was to demonstrate that, despite vast differences in appearance and biological functions, all creatures with free will are subjected to (and revolting against!) the same universal ethics. This becomes mist clear in my "summarizing" story "Redemption".

It's very impressive how you manage to create your own alien race with reference to humanity and yet at the same time give them their own identity as if humans are the aliens and them the natives. It's also extremely refreshing how you can blend serious, sombre themes and humour all at the same time, almost making us guilty to laugh but at the same time keep us thinking. It's brilliant how this Ivan is completely withdrawn from humanity's values and only values worth in art. Especially near the end, when Lyuba writes 'I forgive you' on the manuscript (how dare she maim such art!) and you think he is going to discover guilt but instead he brushes it over by finishing his fifth symphony.

Wonderfully crafted and delicately executed. I might be able to find some fault in it, but honestly it would be me being petty. Really good stuff!

AuthorReply

Comment | 107 words

Mon, May 16th, 2016 7:23pm

Wow, thank you so much for your kind and insightful feedback! I had to work hard for this story due to the "no dialogue" contest requirement; that has really clipped my wings, since descriptive writing is really not my forte.

My morally lacking protagonists have (so far) either shown signs of remorse (Maxim Men in "Scarlet Beast", Adolfo Perrez in "The Inquisitor") or at least had somewhat more acceptable justification for their actions (Jane Addams in "Murder in Sapphington"). The "alien Brahms", however, is the most evil narrator I've ever portrayed, and he shares his professional occupation with me... This story makes me feel exhausted and deflated :(

Never in my life will I be able to properly pronounce this creature's professional name, nor will any member of the pathetic human species, with their pitiful bowls and increasingly unprotected digestive systems. Poor girl, lost in a world she isn't meant to be in. I loved Ivan's perceptions of the human race. You executed that brilliantly, as you did with the entire story, too. You consistently impress - within all fields, you have never let me down. Well done, Oleg.

P.S. - Quite a random question, but how do you manage to italicize the words in your story summary at the top? Is it required to copy and paste them in from a word processor in order to do that? I want to see if I can implement that into my own works.

The Vozs were given civilization by the Russian space traveler Alexei Men ca. 2125 AD, hence their Russian first names combined with their own native (weird-sounding to us) surnames. Ivan's last name, of course, alludes to the great classical composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897). He is his alien dark "alter ego". Interestingly, this is also the name of Doc BROWN-based Voz scientist in my story "Forward to the Past".

Okay, enough of this geekiness :-) About the italics: I used HTML tags, before the phrase and after :)

well im no musician a few of these references went over my head but this was well written. Its actually rather intense and very interesting :) This is a masterpiece in it self :) good job man!

AuthorReply

Comment | 41 words

Tue, May 17th, 2016 12:01am

Thank you for your kind feedback! :-) The references are there mostly to emphasize's Ivan's elitist decadence and obsession with music. I inserted such detailed descriptions of musical material mainly to have them form an unpleasant contrast with Ivan's hideous violence.

Loved the use of the references, I have to say you definitely have a talent for this sort of thing. Ivan's views on humanity brought to light quite a few thought provoking questions (In my mind anyway) and was definitely something that I enjoyed reading.
You sir are most definitely a talented person. Good job

AuthorReply

Comment | 45 words

Tue, May 17th, 2016 3:45am

Thank you very much for your kind feedback! I'm trying to look at humanity from very different angles in my stories. In this one, I tried to make biological humanity to symbolize good and basic natural activities, as opposed to Ivan's "alien" obsession with art.

This is a very deep story. The genius and the average human... And well, his very unusual way to kill her the first time, I have to admit that it made me giggle. I really enjoyed all the music terms you used. As I was reading, I felt like I could hear Ivan`s symphony. Even though I understand his need to create and live through his work, I also have to agree with Lyuba... Divine perfection is what we strive for, but is it really worth it? Everything we lose or fail to see around us... And after we bring to life our entire creation, then what? What will fill the emptyness?

AuthorReply

Comment | 170 words

Tue, May 17th, 2016 7:54pm

Thank you for your kind and insightful comment! I don't think Lyuba is average at all; in fact, I don't think there is such a thing as an average human being in potential. Everyone has a gift, we just need to make sure what it is, and act accordingly. There is no substantial difference between a genius composer and a great kindergarten teacher, plumber, or housewife. Being a good artist is just doing your job, using God's gift to you, no more, no less.

I totally agree that divine perfection is what we strive for. This has been programmed into our very essence. But we cannot conquer heaven by force, we can only enter it through love. And the worst it when we assume, like Ivan Karamazov from Dostoevsky's famous novel (as well as his namesake in my story), that "everything is permitted", that we can become divine by being above good and evil. Adam has already tried that, and it didn't work out... didn't work out at all :-(

You have seriously outdone yourself with this piece. What makes it that much better is the musical references. Being a violin player myself, I love being able to distinguish the different terms, and understand the meanings, rather than having to look them up. It's refreshing to read something with such beauty, and tragedy. The way you wrote this was perfect. The detail, your style of choice... it was all written perfectly. Literally. There is no denying that. Your grammar was better than what I have seen in many months. Not to say people don't make mistakes, but it's nice to read something that doesn't contain so many marks that take away from the feel of the story. Your vocabulary is professional; which is what I love in a writer.

Seriously. You have outdone yourself, Oleg. You got a 100/100 for this amazing story that you have interpreted so well just by using a simple picture. I'm amazed. Great job, darling. (:

AuthorReply

Comment | 81 words

Wed, May 18th, 2016 1:26am

Oh my God... I'm overwhelmed. You are far too kind... I'm so happy you liked this. I don't think this is my best story, but I did work very hard on it due to the tough contest requirements. I tend to double-check every sentence and am wary of possible errors, probably because I'm not a native English speaker and doubts always haunt me... Thank you so much for this amazing feedback, I can't adequately express how much it means to me!

Again, tanks.
I believe that there are many people, who feel as I do, that it's enough to approach a wall, and choose not to climb it, and for me, I can see why through your story - which is nothing short of brilliant, by the way (a fact, I hope, not lost on you for it will always be important). I found that in spite of the deviously, playful way you launch your grenades, I'm still going to have to deal with someone dying. Someone, I think, I could've gotten along with. How's that for bad diction.
You commented on a couple of elements of my story, so I watched for them in Death of a Muse. Most of the time, they seemed absent. Your approach with this story can - and does - live without them. It felt more like 'one giant moment' as opposed to many, many moments strung together. Again, it doesn't need it. It is an epic moment. Congratulations.
By the way, I'm guessing you're the funny one?
I'll read your other stories as well.
NK
Read more at https://www.booksie.com/view-received-message/70317#It0pFMbtGASiosC3.99

When Muses Die

What a powerful story. A classic tragedy of love, obsession, insanity, malice, and misunderstanding.

I am sitting here trying to figure where to start..........

What a tortured soul Ivan is. Lyuba forgiving him for the violence towards her and ultimate death is reminiscent of Desdemona and Othello.

Oleg, my hope is you will one day put your short stories in one large volume. It is brilliant how you force us to put aside all of our preconceived notions about love, creation, beauty, etc.

Well done. Please, NEVER stop writing.

Cheers.

AuthorReply

Comment | 87 words

Thu, May 19th, 2016 7:52pm

Thank you so much for your kind support, Ethan, I highly appreciate it!

Ivan is, so far, the most morally depraved protagonist I've portrayed. I guess he was somewhat inspired by your Rex Talion. They might appear as different kinds of evil at first - Rex is a philosophically-minded denier of God (and, very consequently, moral values being intrinsic to the world), while Ivan is more of a deranged psycho. But what unites them is their absolute rejection of love. That is the root of all evil.

What a fascinating read, Oleg. The vagaries of a god complex are fragile indeed. It was interesting from an alien point of view that he had to look up several ways to kill her due to disparities in anatomy. This held me enthralled from start to finish.
Nicely done.
Megan

AuthorReply

Comment | 25 words

Mon, May 23rd, 2016 2:27am

I really appreciate your kind feedback, Megan. Many of my stories are dedicated to the folly that is god complex, in that or another way.

Great story! I thought that this was a very original piece. The bizarre science fiction perspective worked very well with the numerous ideas you conveyed in the story. I thought the main character had a weird dynamic where he was on a high horse about his work and position as a "creator" and yet managed to be a horrible person, which was very interesting. The ending was dark and tragic, especially the shocking part about the muse's bones inspiring the finale to the work. Overall, I thought this was very creative and thought provoking.

AuthorReply

Comment | 93 words

Tue, May 24th, 2016 8:54pm

Thank you very much for your kind and insightful comment! About the main character - that effect, exactly, was my intention. He selfish and insensitive to the point of becoming a monster, yet he still finds the need to justify his actions. My point was to show that there is no absolute evil, but a gross distortion of the good, that's why my evil characters like rationalizing and trying to convince the reader that their actions were, in fact, not evil. The Emperor from my short story "The Force" does the same thing.

Wow, I play piano and sometimes write my own tunes but I never thought of music this deeply myself! I really like the way this is constructed. The wording and descriptions are amazing and the ending was good.